#the thrilling conclusion to the holiday picture saga | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

bomberqueen17 · 7 years

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We had to clean out the chest freezer so it could be moved. (It fits PERFECTLY under the edge of the table saw, like it was DESIGNED to, we’re SO PUMPED, this Pod is like, advanced-level Tetris I’m telling you, I would’ve taken a picture but it was like 8:30 last night when we figured that out and so it was already kind of dark.) One of the things in it was a pair of quart bags of frozen blackberries. So I made a pie last night, and realized as I was struggling with the crust that I’ve only ever made a couple of pies in my life, and never a fruit pie.

Fruit pies are like. They’re. I don’t know, they’re a major component of the cultural life of my very particular socioeconomic group. My mother’s grandmother (who I don’t remember except as speechlessly senile, but she was a huge formative influence on Mom) baked fruit pies in mass quantity on a consistent basis, and they were the center of much family lore (“apple pie without cheese is like a kiss without a squeeze!” and various stories about spit and throwing things, which makes our family of the past sound extremely interesting). They were a staple of their people’s diet. Joy of Cooking’s On Pie Crusts section confirms this, remarking that fruit pies were a breakfast food initially, and were baked in the dozens, weekly, by rural American households up until the early 20th century.

Anyway I’d never made one, so, now I have. As usual there was excess crust, so I trimmed it off and did as my mother always did, folded it into little envelope shapes and stuck it onto a cookie sheet to bake along with the pie. She called them “tarts”, and so do we, even though that’s not what a tart is, a tart properly has fruit in it. We eat them with jam.

So it is a tradition among my big sister’s kids that fruit pie leftovers are consumed for breakfast-- my mother traditionally makes them for holiday and Sunday dinners-- and so this morning there is blackberry pie for breakfast. And the tarts, which didn’t get eaten last night.

Niece is poorly, still; the consensus is that there’s a virus going around that gives intermittent low-grade fever, mild GI symptoms, headache, and such, and clings on for a few days but has no severe complications. It looks like the older boy has succumbed to it as well, so despite his lack of remaining sick days, he’s staying home today too.

Anyway, poorly Niece has been lying on the bench next to the breakfast table, and is singing to herself. She was given a tart, and picked at it, but then was wrapped up in a blanket and lying around. Her mother asked her if she was a tart, since the blanket-wrapping resembled the envelope shape I’d folded the crust into. “Are you a tiny tart?” Big Sis asked.

“No!” Niece wailed.

“Don’t speak to your daughter like that,” I said, and it was clear that was the first moment the possible double meaning had crossed my sister’s mind.

“Well, she already said she wasn’t, it’s okay,” Sis said, and poured herself coffee.

The Thrilling Conclusion to the Cleaning Out The Freezer Saga is that tonight I am going to try, for the first time in my life, to make pulled pork shoulder without a crock pot. A Dutch Oven should do it, and Joy of Cooking (the only cookbook not already loaded into the pod) has a handy non-crockpot set of instructions. The only other issue is that the kitchen scale is packed and it’s some home-cut-up meat so I have no idea how many pounds of pork shoulder I’m working with. Fortunately I’ve lately done a lot of wedging hunks of meat into Ziplocs which I’ve afterwards annotated with weights, so I’ve some notion of how large a cut of pork shoulder four pounds (the recipe quantity) would be. Not a concrete notion, mind, but at least more of a vague notion than your average person would have.

deputychairman replied to your post “We have put so much stuff into this pod, guys. So much. It’s 93 out....”

i love these little snippets of your life

I am glad someone does; I like telling them because I feel like I appreciate what’s going on a lot more when I organize it into story form. I never know how much entertainment other people derive from them, but I figure, the j button’s a neat trick. I should tag consistently, I suppose.

#deputychairman #fruit pies #personal #i dunno what tag i'd use for these #family stories #family life #pulled pork #cooking

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